The Girl Who Smiled Beads

This is an important and necessary read for everyone - but especially for Americans who find themselves (as I do), so far removed from the wars raging not only in countries far away, but in our own communities. Clemantine Wamariya paints a vivid picture of family, war, violence, lost childhood, and survival. We should take a lesson from her resilience, and be grateful that she survived to tell her story.

A peripheral impression from this vital autobiography is of Clemantine's sister Claire not seeing her as a full person in their experiences together, and how most adults don't treat children with recognition, of having the universal capacity for pain and insecurity and dreams, and as equally building memories and more vulnerably developing selfhood.

What a captivating and thought-provoking memoir. Clemantine tells the harrowing story of her 7 year long journey of escaping the war in Rwanda together with her strong and resourceful sister Claire. In parallel we learn about her arrival in the US and the hardness of what it means to reacquaint yourself with a life of safety. How charity - the economy of givers and takers, saviours and saved - establishes a degrading hierarchy. How anger and trauma go hand in hand, and how families that have been torn apart don't just automatically heal.